Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Observations On The Political Scene

Freshman Confgressman Mark Schauer Suffers In Polls From Obamaitis

“A Republican poll shows freshman Rep. Mark Schauer (D-Mich.) down by nine.

The National Research Inc. poll, conducted for former Rep. Tim Walberg’s (R-Mich.) campaign, has Walberg leading Schauer 46-37, and 50-40 with ‘leaners.’

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/76647-schauer-is-latest-incumbent-dem-to-trail-in-early-poll

This is of interest to me because Mark Schauer is my US Congressman.

Now, I’m no fan of former US Congressman Tim Walberg who is leading Schauer in the current polls (see

https://ironink.org/index.php?blog=1&title=congressman_walberg_writes_pastor_bret&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

as he doesn’t really believe in strict constitutional restrictions upon the size of the Federal government. But if Walberg is for allowing the Federal Government to get kind of porky Schauer is for allowing the Federal government to get grossly obese. Schauer has voted for the Obama death care legislation and I am of the persuasion that Schauer must pay the price for aligning himself w/ this fascist socialist monstrosity. I also don’t think much of Schauer because he refuses to interact w/ his constituency face to face in live townhall meetings. Schauer has instead avoided the voting public but using controlled phone tele-conferences in order to limit the kind of visible interaction that might cast him in an unfavorable light.

I can not bring myself to vote for Tim Walberg but I won’t have any tears when Mark Schauer is defeated this fall.

Obama Senior Officials Promise That Obama Is Going To Go All Combative

President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say.

“This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31629.html

With all my being I hope that B. Hussein Obama follows through on these words. In 1994 when President Clinton was smacked up side the head with the midterm congressional Republican revolution he wised up and dumped his controversial Surgeon General, Jocelyn Elders, and ran to the political middle as was seen in his co-opting the Republicans by stealing some of their issues and claiming them for his own. It was a brilliant political move by Clinton that insured his re-election in 1996. Clinton, learning from the beating he had taken, even said, “The era of big government is over.”

However, if Obama is really intent on being combative and in a mule headed fashion decides to press ahead with his agenda despite a possible Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts it will be like manna falling from heaven for the Republicans. Such a combative attitude in Obama will literally destroy the Democratic party in the mid-term 2010 elections. If Obama refuses to try to include Republican involvement due to a combative turn on his part that combativeness will snap back so hard in 2010 he will be headed towards becoming a one term lame duck president.

It is quite amazing how tone deaf the Democratic party has become. It is almost as if they are living in an alternate universe. Obama promises to be combative. Pelosi promises that regardless of a Brown victory Health Care is going to pass. Barney Frank argues that the Senate should lift its filibuster rules so Health Care legislation will pass. These people are incredible. But let them keep on living in their alternate universe, for the “Gods of the copybook headings with terror and slaughter will return.”

Why I Hate Martin Luther King Day

“[T]he true meaning of the Martin Luther King holiday is that it serves to legitimize the radical social and political agenda that King himself favored and to delegitimize traditional American social and cultural institutions—not simply those that supported racial segregation but also those that support a free market economy, an anti-communist foreign policy, and a constitutional system that restrains the power of the state rather than one that centralizes and expands power for the reconstruction of society and the redistribution of wealth. In this sense, the campaign to enact the legal public holiday in honor of Martin Luther King was a small first step on the long march to revolution, a charter by which that revolution is justified as the true and ultimate meaning of the American identity. In this sense, and also in King’s own sense, as he defined it in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the Declaration of Independence becomes a “promissory note” by which the state is authorized to pursue social and economic egalitarianism as its mission, and all institutions and values that fail to reflect the dominance of equality—racial, cultural, national, economic, political, and social—must be overcome and discarded.

By placing King—and therefore his own radical ideology of social transformation and reconstruction—into the central pantheon of American history, the King holiday provides a green light by which the revolutionary process of transformation and reconstruction can charge full speed ahead. Moreover, by placing King at the center of the American national pantheon, the holiday also serves to undermine any argument against the revolutionary political agenda that it has come to symbolize. Having promoted or accepted the symbol of the new dogma as a defining—perhaps the defining—icon of the American political order, those who oppose the revolutionary agenda the symbol represents have little ground to resist that agenda.”

Dr. Samuel Francis

Instead of just blacks being hosed by the State we are all now hosed by the State. Looked at in a Macro sense and considering the long run Blacks didn’t gain anything by the efforts of MLK. They have no more freedom now than they did in the day of Jim Crow. They are more in bondage now to the State then they ever have been, and worst off then they ever have been. Oh sure, the State gave them some short term assistance but that short term assistance was purchased at the cost of greater long term enslavement to the State, purchased at the cost of destroying the black family over the long term (check the statistics on the black family before MLK secured the dream and the statistics after MLK secured the dream), purchased at the cost of what can only be considered attempted genocide of black people by means of abortion. The State yielding to the demands of MLK didn’t do them any favors when looking at the fallout of being “rescued” by the State.

So “Sis Boom Bah … Rah Rah Rah” … the State came to the rescue of the poor down trodden black man and delivered him from the machinations of “evil whitey.” But only at the cost of the destruction of the rest of their culture. Only at the cost of their dependence upon the race pimps who are the agents of the State and only at the cost of the enslavement of all of us to the State and only at the cost of giving much of their culture a victim and entitlement mentality. Indeed, what ended up happening as a result of MLK’s success in pushing the State to rescue black people is that the Black people went from the frying pan of persecution to the oven of destruction.

MLK set back black freedom decades when you look at the whole picture and not just concentrate on water hoses, Bull Connors, and German Shepherds.

If we are going to have a holiday honoring a Black American I vote for Booker T. Washington. Now, there was an honorable Christian man.

Promise Involves Ongoing Levels of Fulfillment

When the Scriptures deal with God’s Promises we see the fulfillment of those Promises to be dynamic and not static. Whereas in a prediction the fulfillment of the prediction either comes true or doesn’t come true w/ God’s covenant promises you have fulfillment that come true but often in a way different than anticipated when looking at the original Promise.

Ill. – Promise of Engagement / Fulfillment of Engagement promise leading to Wedding Promises leading to fulfillment of Wedding Promises.

The Promise made my two 20 year old in getting engaged are fulfilled on their Wedding day but those promises are fulfilled by the act of other Promises exchanged on the Wedding day so that the original engagement promises are extended and intensified. In turn those wedding day Promises are fulfilled over the course of a married life in a myriad of ways — ways that are dictated by the ebb and flow of the relationship. 65 years later could either of the two young people who originally made promises of engagement have had any idea how that original engagement promise would have ended up being fully fulfilled?

God’s Promises in the Old Covenant are like this except God’s fulfilled promises cover millennium and not mere decades. They are Promises made and Promises kept but they are made and kept in ways that might not have been expected when the Promise was originally made. There is a great deal of this keeping of promises that results in extending and intensifying the original promise.

Ill. – Father Promising 5 year old son all the books in his magnificent library when he turns 18 but between 5 and 18 the Kindle is invented and so at 18 the Father gives the son a Kindle w/ all his library books downloaded instead of the library itself. Has the Father kept the Promise? Would the Son accuse the Father of going back on the promise?

This is the way much of the OT Promises work. God’s relationship w/ Israel was founded on the promises to Abraham in Genesis 12. But even in the OT itself the Promise God made to Abraham is fulfilled in unanticipated ways only to see the promise extended and intensified so that it is fulfilled over and over again in unexpected ways.

For example in one sense God’s promise to Abraham of “seed” is fulfilled with the Birth of Isaac. But of course we all know that the Promise once fulfilled was extended and intensified. A major theme of Genesis is how from one man the posterity of Abraham grows to a community of 70 people — a number that communicates that God is building His own Nation and People to rival the 70 nations mentioned in the Table of Nations. (Gen. 10-11)

Yet the promise fulfillment doesn’t stop there. In Ex 1:7 suddenly we see a people who are ‘exceedingly numerous.’ God’s Promise fulfillment to Abraham to have a seed continues past the OT as we see Jesus as being the singular seed that God had in mind when He made the promise of seed to Abraham. (Gal. 3:16, 19)

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,”[i]who is Christ.

What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.

But even when the original Promise is fully fulfilled in an ultimate sense there are ripple fulfillments to the original promise that wash up on the shores of history. God’s promise to Abraham is also fulfilled in God’s bringing in of believing Gentiles into the covenant so that Father Abraham really does have many sons…. ‘I am one of them, and so are you …”

Here we see a pattern that we find throughout Scripture when it comes to God’s covenant Promises. God fulfills promises in ways that we might not expect (like the Father w/ a Kindle instead of a Library) and then extending and intensifying that promise so that it is fulfilled many times over in more and more glorious fashions.

Consider Abraham again and God’s Promise to make his name great.

Over and over again we find this Promise fulfilled, extended and intensified. When Abraham becomes wealthy in the land his name becomes great as God promised to Abraham in Genesis 12, but God is not finished yet. Abraham’s people go into the Exodus and eventually are brought into bondage. Their name is hardly great and yet God leads them out and once again He fulfills the promise to give Abraham a great name. This promise fulfillment ebbs and flows. As Israel is disobedient their name is brought low. As they are obedient God lifts them up and gives them a great name again. However, we all know that the ultimate fulfillment of this original promise to Abraham is fulfilled in Christ. Christ is the one who is given such a great name that at his name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. However, once again, there are ripple effects to the ultimate fulfillment of giving Abraham a great name. Now, God conspires to give His Church a great name that His Church might glorify Him.

We could do the same with God’s promise to Abraham of the Land in Genesis 12. Once Israel occupies the land through Joshua God fulfills his promise and yet that promise finds its ultimate promise fulfilled in the Lord Christ who was the great Son of Abraham with the greatest of great names who has occupied for His people the Heavenly Canaan land. However, from the that full fulfillment of the original promise there ripples other fulfillments out from that fulfillment. Today God’s people are told they will inherit not just a piece of real estate in the Middle East but the whole earth (Mt. 5:5).

The repeated extending and intensifying of the original promise prepares us for the expectation that the final fulfillment will not be in terms of the literal details of the original promise like the Kindle analogy.

And here we have rubbed up against the problem of much “literal” readings hermeneutics employed by dispensationalists and others. There are those who don’t understand the idea of extending and intensifying of the promise and so they are still looking for the whole library when the Kindle is staring them clearly in the face.

The clearest example of this is the idea that National Israel still has a future as God’s uniquely covenant people. The promises to Israel were fulfilled completely in the Church. The Church is the Kindle and yet many people still read the Scriptures looking for the whole library that is in their minds National Israel to make some kind of comeback.

However, the Church upon reflecting on God’s Promises in light of Jesus resurrection came to understand as Paul put it, ‘that all the Promises of God are ‘Yes’ and Amen in Christ Jesus.’ The Church, following Scripture has understood that the Old covenant promises only make sense in light of how they have been extended, intensified and fulfilled in Christ. He was the singular seed of Abraham. He was the seed promised to David.

12 “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his Father, and he shall be My son.

The Lord Jesus is the one in whom all nations of the earth would be blessed. To be in Christ was to be a child of Abraham and therefore to share in the inheritance of God’s people. He is the Passover lamb protecting God’s people from the wrath of God. His death and resurrection has achieved the ultimate Exodus and so is our Moses leading us out of the bondage of our sin and the tyranny of the Devil. Returning to Christ is the ultimate return from Babylonian Exile. In him the Church has been given the inheritance of both the whole earth and the Heavenly Promised Land as fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham to give him a land. (This is why we aren’t consumed w/ what happens in the Middle East.)
Christ is the mediator of a new covenant. The sacrificial death and risen life of the Lord Jesus has fulfilled and surpassed all that was signified in the Tabernacle, the sacrifices and the priesthood. He was the temple not made with hands, indeed He was Mt. Zion itself – the one where the focus of the name and presence of God rests.

So what we see in all this is that Promises made by God in the Old Covenant are of such a nature that by the time they are fulfilled the fulfillment looks different then the way the original hearers of the Promises might have anticipated. The promises were made in terms of the way the original recipients could understand but the fulfillment as it comes ultimately in Christ is at a different level of reality, though a level of reality that still legitimately corresponds to the original promise.

Throughout the centuries all of this has been misunderstood from time to time.

Ill. – Book of Hebrews

Ill – Dispensationalists who look for a rebuilt temple, reconstitution of the Israel Priesthood and sacrificial system or a battle between biblically identified enemies or a revival of the throne of David.

All of this is to seriously misconstrue the Christian faith and if pursued intently enough it is to pursue a different religion.

A Conversation On Theonomy With A Westminster Graduate

Paul Castelleno (PC)

(Who in another post from this thread reminded everyone he was a graduate of Westminster East.)

“The reason that there is such antipathy towards theonomy, at least from the conversations I’ve had with Historically Reformed people is:

a) Theonomy is the flip side of Dispensationalism – Dispys’ make too much of a distinction between the Church and Israel and theonomists draw virtually no distinction at all.”

Bret (who is not a graduate of Westminster) responds,

This is the kind of statement that one would expect to find coming from an enemy of Theonomists. It is on the same level of the accusations against the early Church that because they took communion they were cannibals.

It is ridiculous to suggest that Theonomy makes virtually no distinction between the Church and Israel. Have you been to a Church service conducted by a Theonomist where he made a sacrifice? Have you been to a Church service conducted by a Theonomist where he insisted that he was a Priest?

What is at the core of this fallacious charge? Could it be that at the core of this fallacious charge is PC’s latent antinominaism? The only reason that Theonomy is scurrilously accused of making virtually no distinction between Israel and the Church is because, unlike antinomianism, Theonomy takes God’s third use of the Law seriously.

PC

“b) Though Bahnsen, Rushdoony, North, et al, have tried, there is no rationally, Biblically, theologically, consistent exegesis that has demonstrated the viability of theonomy today.”

Bret responds,

That a graduate of Westminster could write something like this is absolutely mind numbing. Has he never heard of Bahnsen’s Theonomy and Christian Ethics? Now of course our earnest Westminster grad will insist that this has been refuted … but by whom? Who was convinced by the refutation? The antinomians? Certainly not the Theonomists. J. Ligon Duncan has tried his hand at refutation but his refutation has been itself refuted. There is tons of rationally, Biblically, theologically, consistent exegesis that has demonstrated the viability of theonomy today.

PC

“c) When theonomists require Old Covenant Jewish casuistry and penal sanctions to be a part of the New Covenant, they generally give us the impression that they re-interpret what and how God manifests His grace in the New Covenant. Theonomy gives the impression that there is no recognition of the fact that the Old Covenant was a Bloody Covenant and the New Covenant is a Bloodless Covenant (post crucification of course).”

Bret Responds,

This is the kind of statement that we could expect from a Marcionite. Implicit in this statement is a challenge to God’s immutability. Underlying this statement is the idea that in the OT God was a meanie but in the NT God changed and is now a kinder and Gentler God. So whereas in Paul’s (b) we had implicit antinomianism in Paul’s (c) we have latent Marcionism.

And while not trying to be too snarky you’d think that somebody that touts his Westminister pedigree would know how to spell “C-R-U-C-I-F-I-X-I-O-N.”

Are we to seriously believe that all because Theonomist suggest that God’s penology should still apply that some how proves that Theonomy believes that the New and Better covenant is still a covenant that requires ongoing blood rights in order to have communion w/ God? By this reasoning anybody who believes in any capital punishment at all could be accused of not recognizing the fact that the Old Covenant is a blood covenant and the new covenant is bloodless. Really, this statement betrays more than a large dollop of ignorance.

PC

“d) What eventually arises when one has protracted conversations with theonomists (in my experience) is a type of evangelism via execution! The long suffering and patience of God – allowing unbelievers to heap judgment upon their own heads – seems to give way to immediate, divine retribution and judgment. Which makes one wonder, what then did Jesus accomplish after all if there is no propitiating God at these points?”

Bret Responds,

This is nothing but slander. This is nothing but a violation of the ninth commandment. Does our Westminster graduate really believe that Theonomists believe in evangelism by execution? Once again, if this reasoning is pressed then we must never execute for fear of violating the long suffering and patience of God. Notice the implicit Marcionism again. In the OT God was not patient and long suffering but in the NT now God is patient and long suffering.

No Theonomist wants divine retribution and judgment to be any more or less immediate than it has ever been.

In the final italicized question in (d) above we find ourselves asking when did the Reformed Church go liberal? Does the writer really believe that Jesus propitiated the sins of criminals that commit capital crimes so that capital crimes don’t have to be visited with the sword because Jesus already took the penalty for the consequences of sinners who commit capital crimes?

Finally, how long would our Westminster graduate suggest that sinners should be allowed to heap judgment on their own heads until their capital crimes are visited with punishment. How many repeat offenses of capital crimes must we turn the other cheek over before we actually visit the crimes with their revealed penalties? Some details here would be nice to have.

PC

“e) Lastly (and I can go on), it appears to wreak havoc with any Reformed notion of Common Grace.”

Bret responds,

Gary North has written extensively on this subject affirming Common grace in the sense that God gives gifts to the reprobate though denying that God overall the gifts turn out to show God’s favor. Besides, there are whole tribes of Reformed Christians who deny Common Grace. Has the embrace of Common grace now become a shibboleth that one must speak in order to be considered Reformed?

If I were to reason as our Westminster Grad has reasoned I might say something like … “Embracing Common Grace wreaks havoc w/ any Reformed notion of being Reformed.

Famous Moments With Martha Coakley

Martha Coakley is the Democrat in Massachusetts who is running for the US Senate in the seat vacated by Ted “Kopechene” Kennedy’s death. It is encouraging to me to know that Coakley is seeking to keep alive the Kennedy tradition of saying off the wall irrational things.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/01/16/ma-sen_coakley_calls_curt_shilling_another_yankees_fan.html

In the one above, Martha, obviously clueless about Major league Baseball, notes that the Boston Red Sox hero of the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees was in reality always a Yankees fan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ-ZeLSZPc8&feature=player_embedded

In the one above Marvelous Martha the Mouth says that devout Catholics “Probably Shouldn’t Work in Emergency Rooms since their faith might come in conflict with proposed health care legislation that will not allow people to not participate in medical procedures that violate their faith convictions.

Finally there is Coakley’s reporter incident where one of her Democratic campaign operatives muscled a pesky reporter who was asking to many questions of Coakley to the ground. There are photos of Coakley staring at the incident and yet she has said on record,

“I know there were people following, including two from the Brown campaign who have been very aggressive in their stalking,” Coakley told reporters during an appearance at Kit Clark Senior Services in Dorchester. “I’m not sure what happened. I know something occurred, but I’m not privy to the facts. I’m sure it will come out, but I’m not aware of that.”

Conclusions,

1.) Martha Coakley is brain dead and thus the perfect person to sit in Ted Kennedy’s old seat.

2.) The Democrats, when operating in Mordor, don’t believe they have to run legitimate candidates because they believe that it is a given that whatever brain dead thuggish Democrat they put forward will be elected.

3.) Democrats believe that freedom is the citizenry being free to do exactly what they tell the citizenry to do.